By The Ottawa Citizen October 6, 2007
VANCOUVER – Alexander Ludwig is just a little excited at the moment. He’s just come back from a press screening for his new movie, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, and he’s still having a hard time swallowing the fact that he’s the main star in a big Hollywood picture.
“I was so pleased with what I saw. It’s still doesn’t feel real. I just feel so fortunate that I had the chance to make this movie with such excellent actors and such a great crew. You know, you spend all this time making it, and you never know how it’s going to turn out, but it didn’t hit me until today that — Oh My God! — I just made this big feature,” says Ludwig from his Vancouver home.
As the central character in The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, which opened yesterday, Ludwig plays Will Stanton, a kid moving through several rites of teen passage just as a Satanic force plots to take over the world.
Though he’s not yet a man, Will must save the world from the rise of darkness — and in order to do that, he’s sent back and forth through time on a scavenger hunt for “the signs,” physical objects that, once assembled and worn on an old belt, will give Will superpowers.
“I’ve always wanted superpowers,” says the 15-year-old Ludwig. “That’s one of the reasons why I was so lucky to get this role. … As an actor, I’m drawn to complicated characters. And I could relate to Will. I understood how he handles things.”
Ludwig says one of his favourite scenes is one where Will loses it emotionally and starts blowing things up just because he’s angry and frustrated by his larger-than-life mission, and his very real search for teen love.
“I’ve never had the chance to get into that much emotion before,” says Ludwig, whose previous credits include work on Sandlot 3 and Most Extreme Primate. “I was pleased the way it turned out … because we’ve all been there. I’ve had moments in my own life where I go to my room and scream into the pillows. Everyone can probably relate to that feeling.”
Ludwig says he’s always been into acting, a passion that turned into formal work and a paycheque six years ago when he was of nine.
Though he says his mother used to be an actress, Ludwig says it wasn’t easy convincing his parents that a life in theatre arts would be the best thing for a kid from the West Coast.
“My mom and dad were kind of iffy about the whole thing. You know as well as I do the whole kid-actor thing can get a bit warped. But eventually, they said — ‘OK Alexander, if this is what you want, go for it,’ ” he says.
So far the decision hasn’t thrown out any downsides. Ludwig and his family remain in the Lower Mainland, and continue to resist the lure to relocate south in Los Angeles.
“One day we may move down there, but so far, we’ve been able to make it work up here. This is where all my friends are, and that’s what keeps me grounded,” he says.
“My friends and my family have been incredibly supportive, and it’s my friends who make sure I stay true to who I am. Like, my best friend supports me and I support him. It’s like he comes to my movies and I go to his hockey games. It’s really the same show of support, and I’m happy for him, he’s happy for me,” he says.
“So even though I’m an actor, and I just made this big movie, I don’t think of myself as a movie star at all,” says Ludwig. “I’m just a normal kid, doing normal kid things, who’s lucky enough to do what he loves.”
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